The amazing Ramadasa

From last week’s newspaper, a profile of one of the most fascinating people around the North Coast:

In late 1999, Amy Michelle Butler, fresh off a trauma, declared her independence from her former life. 

She took on a new name: Ramadasa Jivatma.

And became a new person, leaving behind Nebraska to pursue her happiness on the North Beach.

Her life, for 10 years, has been almost a constant struggle, with periods of blinding pain, intense fear and a rootless desperation.

The pay off: freedom.

Ramadasa’s journey to re-invent herself ultimately became a self-driven one, yet it started with forces outside herself, back in Iowa, where she was raised.

“On Nov. 11, 1999, I rode in a car with a drunk driver,” she says. “That ride ended one life and started another.”

The driver of the car walked away, unhurt. While her own injuries seemed relatively minor, as Amy healed, she began to feel constant pain, with memory lapses that had her feeling disconnected from her own past. She started to seem . . . different.

 “She’s more spiritual now,”  her mother, Carol Ewing, said by phone from her home in Elk Horn, Iowa.

“She’s just a little bit different. She’s kinder, she’s more spiritual. It amazes me, some of the things she tells me.”

To those who only casually know her, Ramadasa, with her brightly dyed hair (purple, blue, pink or whatever the mood calls for) and facial piercings seems to be one of the wildest, most joyous free spirits on the North Coast.

She is an exuberant DJ on local community station KOSW 91.3; on Friday nights, she breaks up her play list of hard-core metal bands with humorous, off-the-cuff personal commentaries, and surf reports.

Those surf reports are important to her, as she is a devoted body boarder, riding the waves (off Butter Clam is a favorite spot) on any day – hot or cold, rain or shine – that her body is up to it.

As she explains on her Myspace page:

“I am disabled from Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), also called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome (RSD) is a chronic neurological disease affecting an estimated 1.5 to more than 6 million Americans. CRPS/RSD is a malfunction of part of the nervous system and the immune system as they respond to tissue damage from trauma, such as an accidental injury or medical procedure.”

Living on the coast has helped brighten her often-dark battle.

In an email, she explained how she ended up here:

“I went on vacation to Washington in September of 2003.  I fell in love with the ocean and the beautiful landscape of the coast. I decided that I wanted to live here and was determined to be back in a year. 363 days later I moved to Washington from Omaha, Nebraska . . .

“I LOVE everything about North Beach!  I love to body board, hike, beach comb, fly kites, ride horses and I’m not a tourist!  The people here are amazing!  I have never met such generous, sincere, loving people.  And I did meet my Colin and he’s definitely the best thing about living here!” 

His full name is Colin Black, the boyfriend and soulmate she met here; after first connecting on Myspace, they now live together in Copalis Crossing.

“She doesn’t really fit into categories,” Black says of Ramadasa, who is also an artist who makes her own paper (using old newspapers, leaves and other items). “She expresses herself in her own unique manner. She’s just a good person all the way around.”

How did she come up with her new name, Ramadasa Jivatma?

 “It was given to me by my guru.  After the accident I read the Bible, Quran, Talmud, Bhaghavad Gita, and any other religious texts I could get my hands on.  Hinduism was the only thing that made sense to me. 

“I didn’t feel like Amy…the previous name of this body.  I needed my own name. I asked for one and about a month later I was given mine. . . .  

“Ramadasa means servant of Lord Rama or God.” 

Her mother says she sometimes still calls her “Amy,” out of habit. “I explained to her ‘I’m your momma. That’s the name I gave you.’”

Yet Carol Ewing knew, long before the accident that changed her daughter’s life, that little Amy was not your average child.

“When she was 2 years old, I knew she was going to be different.

And when she was 7 or 8, she came home from school with pink streaks in her hair.  I said, ‘Amy what happened to your hair? What did you do at school?’ She said, ‘I wanted it this way.’ She had blond blond hair at the time, but she had been sneaking (dye) to school, then washing her hair out so I wouldn’t know it.”

The differences in her daughter went far beyond the color of her hair. “She would rather read the encyclopedia than go out and play. I’ve always told people she’s always marched to the beat of her own drummer.”

Out here on the North Beach, Carol’s daughter is still marching to an off-beat.

Besides Colin, a talented musician, the joys she has discovered as part of her new life on the coast are being a DJ and body surfing.

She’s been a KOSW DJ since March, 2007, and says “I love it. I really don’t even care if anyone is listening because I’m usually having a great time all by myself loudly laughing in The Shack,” she says, referring to the tiny radio station on Ocean Lake Way. 

“Everyone at the station understands my physical limitations and if I can’t make it in to town because I’m not feeling well it’s not a big deal. If I didn’t DJ I wouldn’t have any real reason to get out of the house other than surfing!”

While her body is 35 years old, she is just about to turn 10, with her new life.

“Sometimes I think I have memories but I’m not sure because these ‘memories’ are more like remembering scenes from a movie that my body was in,” Ramadasa says. “My family does try to stir up memories by telling me stories but so far nothing has come up.  

“Everyone says that I’m not the same person I was and I truly believe that I’m not the girl they knew…she died in that accident.”

The new person that has emerged has found independence, with the help of a soul patriot.

“Colin is my greatest source of freedom. He lets me do what I want and allows me to always be just me . . .”

For more, see myspace.com/ramadasa.